Earl's Palace, Birsay

The Ruins of the Palace Seen Over the Village

The village of Birsay in the north west corner of Orkney'sWest Mainland is dominated by the
extensive remains of the Earl's Palace. The scale of the ruin seems odd in this
largely rural coastal setting, and your first reaction on seeing it is to
wonder why it is here at all.

The answer lies with
Robert Stewart, the
illegitimate son of King James
V of Scotland and one of his mistresses,
Euphemia
Elphinstone.Robert was born in
1533, and in 1564 he was given the Earldom of Orkney and Lordship of
Shetland and the position of the
Sheriff of Orkney. In 1568 he added the properties formerly controlled by the
Bishop of Orkney to his estate, including the
Bishop's Palace in
Kirkwall and extensive lands
around Birsay.

It is probable that there was already a Bishop's Palace at Birsay
which Earl Robert
Stewart demolished before beginning to build his own Earl's Palace here in
1569. Also nearby was St Magnus
Church, on the site of a church dating back to 1064. This survives in use
today. Use of forced local labour helped ensure that the Palace was complete by
1574. (Continues below image...)

Patrick
was still trying to negotiate his way out of prison when, in May 1614, his son,
another Robert Stewart, led a rebellion against the Crown. He started by
landing at Birsay and taking control of the Earl's Palace, before mustering
enough support to defeat the acting Sheriff and 200 armed men who came to
arrest him. Robert then marched to Kirkwall, taking control of
Kirkwall Castle and the Earl's
Palace there.

James VI
responded by sending forces under the Earl of Caithness to Orkney on 23 August
1614, and following an artillery bombardment that destroyed the castle, Robert
surrendered. He was hanged in Edinburgh on 1 January 1615,
and his father Patrick was beheaded on 6
February. It is said that part of the delay in Patrick's execution was due to
the need to give him time to learn the Lord's Prayer.

It is because of the Stewart family that visitors to Orkney have
ever since been confused by the presence of not one but two Earl's Palaces, in
very different parts of Mainland. The Earl's Palace at Birsay continued to be
used by the Stewarts' successors to the Earldom, the Earls of Morton. But by
1650 it was recorded by Cromwell's forces when they
requisitioned the building that windows were broken and shutters missing: and
by 1700 the roof had collapsed.

A tour of the Palace shows that in its brief heyday this would have
comprised a grand group of buildings set around a courtyard. The ranges rose to
two storeys, and the corner towers to three. A north range was added in the
1580s complete with a Great Hall at first floor level.

Today's Earl's Palace at Birsay is so extensively ruined that it is
difficult to get a strong feel for what life was like here. But for an insight
into a difficult period of Orkney's history, a visit is highly recommended,
particularly for those completing the picture partly formed at the
Bishop's and Earl's Palaces in
Kirkwall.